Sunday, 3 July 2016

A lot can happen in a year.

I'm a regular culprit of blog abandonment and only really get round to it when I'm entirely free of any other commitments. I tend to thrash out numerous posts and then go silent for months on end. The last year has been no exception, but with legitimate reason.

Shortly after my last post, my life turned on its head and went into crazy mode. I was offered my first teaching position a week or two after my last post and since then I have been busy literally all the time! As you can imagine, teaching is a full-time job and then some, regardless of your contracted hours. I had to adjust to having a real grown-up job with full-time commitments and without sounding too modest, I think I've been doing a damn good job and am still thoroughly enjoying it.

While most of my life in the last year has been consumed by work, other life-changing things have also occurred and completely stopped me in my tracks. I won't go into massive detail on these but it feels silly not to mention them, as they are all part of the reason I've been AWOL.

Just after Christmas, my nan fell ill and spent all of the holiday period in hospital. She had peaks and troughs but essentially her health deteriorated massively in a short space of time and unfortunately we lost her to pneumonia just three days into 2016. This was a huge thing to deal with as it was really my first experience of grief and I held a lot in initially, in order to look out for my family and ensure their experiences were as easy and painless as such a situation could be. This obviously was a stressful & upsetting time and something that completely changed our lives but as time has passed, it got somewhat easier and less upsetting to deal with and we're now slightly more at peace with the loss of such a phenomenal woman.

Not long after coming to terms with the loss of my nan, I was also faced with the break-up of a long-term relationship. A relationship that had existed and been the biggest part of my young life for almost 8 years. As you can imagine again, this wasn't an easy thing to deal with. It took a lot of adjustment and reassurance to get used to a life without someone who had been like a right arm for a massive part of my life. This experience consisted of ups and downs, upset, loneliness, confusion, phases of resentment and hating (both of myself and the ex at times), apathy and a hell of a lot of unanswered questions. This happened three months ago and while I wouldn't consider myself completely free of the aforementioned ups and downs, I do consider myself to be through the worst of it. I think its impossible to ever be fully rid of someone who was a big part of your life and to be honest 'rid' seems the wrong word as we still have a lot in common and I would hope that we both still have respect for each other and the memories we shared. But the fact remains that you can't force something if its existence is so one-sided. There comes a time (and time being the key word) when you realise that you can't change someone's feelings and you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you continue to try.

So there we have it, those are the reasons for the most recent case of blog-abandonment. To be honest, I could do a whole post on my experiences and the details of all three of those things, but some things should be left unsaid. (Or rather left in un-published posts) However, it is now July, I am a lady of leisure for the whole of Summer and after reading a lot of blogs recently, I feel inspired and ready to get back on the blogging wagon. Blogging is something I always feel happy doing and I love sharing my experiences and memories (and purchases) on here. The bonus being that sometimes, people actually read them too!

Anyway, blog re-design and re-introduction over, get ready for some posts!